You might be looking for a relief from stress, distraction from anxiety or the satisfaction that comes from mastering a new skill. You might want to save money by making decorations for your home yourself, rather than buying them in shops, or create personalised presents for friends rather than the often underwhelming off the shelf options. There’s no bad reason for wanting to start a crafting hobby – simply enjoying the pleasant sensation of working with your hands and watching something take shape is reason enough! Today we’re taking a look at how you can get started with a crafting hobby.
Choosing a Skill
‘Crafting’ isn’t a single discipline or hobby. If you’re thinking starting a crafting project could be what you need, it’s well worth thinking about what kind of craft you should focus on. Each one uses different skills and different equipment, feels different as you work on it and produces very different finished products.
These are just a few of the different kinds of craft and what they require:
Sewing involves using a needle and thread to attach multiple pieces of fabric together to make toys, decorations and accessories and clothes.
Embroidery uses lots of the same skills and equipment as sewing, but is a purely decorative art. You decorate a single piece of fabric (or an existing object) with coloured thread and other items like sequins.
Weaving uses a small loom and needles (when done as a craft in the home, as opposed to the large machines used on the industrial scale) to interlace two strands of fabric, making placemats, blankets and rugs, or even wall decorations.
Papercrafts is a term that covers another whole subset of crafting involving paper, from origami to scrapbooking, to card making to decoupage, but all involve some degree of cutting, folding and gluing.
Sticking With Your Hobby
In the early days it may be difficult for you to stick with your new crafting hobby – in that awkward period when it’s no longer novel, but you haven’t acquired the skills and experience to attempt to larger, more impressive projects.
One of the most important things you can do is structure your time. Work on your craft too little and you’ll drift away from the hobby before achieving anything. Devote yourself to it too much and you’ll burn out. Decide what time commitment works for you, whether it’s an hour a night, or one evening a week, or ten minutes during a tea break, and stick with it.
Something that may help is to look into starting projects on a regular time table. A craft subscription box UK companies can send out may help here, providing one manageable project with instructions and materials every month, which you have to work through before the next one arrives.